Monday, June 27, 2016

I Didn´t get Deported!

We received this email on June 27.So this week I had to go to Manaus to renew my visa to not get deported back to the US. I was actually supposed to renew my visa about a month ago, but when I went to the mission office the secretaries said that there was a problem with my visa, so I would have to renew it a little later. So apparently the secretaries waited to renew it until less than a week before my visa expired. But it´s ok I didn´t get deported! hahaha.

So as I´ve said in the past few emails we have had a group of americans visiting here in Manacapuru, and they´ve actually been doing a ton of stuff to help the missionary effort here. Somehow they have been finding several of the most golden investigators that I have met on my mission. It´s funny how we spend all of our time for two years looking for these people and this group of americans comes here and finds a bunch of them, without even speaking the language. Haha.

So this week we had two really special baptisms, one in the Manacapuru ward and one in the Miriti ward. One is named Ulysses and the other is named Felipe. Ulysses works for the organization where the group of americans was doing their service project, and he started talking to the leader of the group, who served a mission in Fortaleza. He made friends with all of the americans and they invited him to church. So it turns out that, for many years, he has been going out into the jungle in the middle of the night to pray and ask God what religion is the "correct" religion that he should follow. He also invited his friend Felipe (who also had been praying about the same thing) to church, and he went too. So we (the four elders here in manacapuru) started teaching them. It was such a cool experience seeing a small part of their conversion to the gospel.

It seems like we as missionaries are such a small part of peoples´ conversions. It is amazing to see just a little about how God prepares His children to receive the gospel, and how they change through the covenant of baptism and the atonement. The most fulfilling part of being on a mission is watching people change completely through the atonement of Jesus Christ. It is literally the best thing ever. The church is true!

I hope you all have the best week of your entire lives this week! I love you all!!!!!